$cat /journal
Notes from the studio.
Practical writing on storefronts, systems, and the products we ship for merchants.
Showing 1–12 of 133 articles · page 1 of 12
Nov 2, 2026 · Ahmed
Inside OpenAI's New Agent Session Settings
- Automation & AI
- Apps & Product Engineering
openai-node 7.46.0 added review, compaction, and time_awareness settings to Agent sessions, here's exactly what each one controls.
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Nov 2, 2026 · Muhammad Rehan
What Shopify's network_access Config Actually Does
- Integrations & APIs
- Apps & Product Engineering
Shopify's new network_access section in shopify.app.toml looks like a firewall. It's actually a deploy-time allow-list for monitoring and UX.
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Nov 2, 2026 · Muhammad Umar
Shopify's New trusted_vault_origin CVV Signal
- Payments & Marketplaces
- Apps & Product Engineering
trusted_vault_origin lets payment apps skip CVV checks on vaulted cards, but three separate gates decide whether you ever see the field at all.
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Nov 1, 2026 · Ahmed
Shopify Flow Automations, Now Agent-Managed
- Automation & AI
- Apps & Product Engineering
Shopify's AI Toolkit lets an external agent create, update, and run your store's Flow workflows, with write_automations gating direct API access.
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Nov 1, 2026 · Muhammad Umar
Shopify's Automatic Early Hints Explained
- SEO & Performance
- Storefront Engineering
Shopify now scans generated HTML to auto-detect render-blocking files and preload them via Early Hints, beating hand-authored preload hints at scale.
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Nov 1, 2026 · Muhammad Rehan
Shopify's IP Allowlist: What It Actually Locks Down
- Integrations & APIs
Shopify's new IP allowlist blocks Admin API requests from unlisted servers, but it can't cover Flow's HTTP action, Oxygen storefronts, or serverless hosts.
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Oct 31, 2026 · Ahmed
What OpenAI’s Decisions API Gained Between Beta and GA
- Automation & AI
Decisions API went GA with EU/US inference residency and prompt caching added since beta, plus a doubled per-request question cap. Here's what changed.
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Oct 31, 2026 · Muhammad Umar
What Shopify Canvas Can’t Do Yet — A Checklist
- Storefront Engineering
- Apps & Product Engineering
Shopify's Canvas launched without app blocks, Theme Store themes, Markets, rollouts, or translations. Here's what that means before you say yes to a client.
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Oct 31, 2026 · Muhammad Rehan
stripe-node Quietly Changed How Webhook Timestamp Checks Work
- Payments & Marketplaces
- Integrations & APIs
Two stripe-node releases changed webhook timestamp-tolerance defaults for verifyHeader() and constructEvent(). Here's what shifted, and what to check.
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Oct 30, 2026 · Muhammad Rehan
Shopify's Purchase Order Read API Goes Public
- Operations & Fulfillment
- Integrations & APIs
Shopify's new Purchase Order Read API ships in 2026-10, but read_inventory alone no longer authorizes the reads your preview integration relied on.
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Oct 30, 2026 · Muhammad Umar
Shopify's Section Rendering API: The Null-in-200 Trap
- Storefront Engineering
Shopify's Section Rendering API caps requests at five sections and can return a failed section as null inside an HTTP 200 — here's how to handle both correctly.
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Oct 30, 2026 · Ahmed
Shopify Theme App Add-Ons: One App, One Theme, One Install
- Apps & Product Engineering
- Storefront Engineering
Shopify now lets theme developers bundle a storefront app with a Theme Store listing. Here's how the one-per-theme and ownership rules actually work.
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